THE year on Broadway was hardly the best of times. In fact, it came teeteringly close to the worst.

Since the season traditionally runs from the beginning of May to the end of the following April – in accordance with the Tony Awards – a year-end 10 Best List always involves the last part of one season and the first part of the next.

Naturally, it’s never simple looking back and trying to compare (and then pick or discard) between apples and oranges. The lemons, however, are easy.

This was the year when the performers were far better than what they were performing in, what with Hugh Jackman dominating “The Boy From Oz,” and those two Girls from Oz, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, making bearable (almost) the musical “Wicked.”

Luckily, some of the greatest performances – Vanessa Redgrave in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and Kevin Kline in “Henry IV” – came in productions not entirely dependent on their personal alchemy.

Eddie Izzard gave a fantastic performance in the revival of Peter Nichols’ “A Day in the Life of Joe Egg,” only to follow it up with a sensational, cross-dressed one-person show at City Center.

Nor can I forget the immensely skilled playing of Denis O’Hare in Richard Greenberg’s generally overpraised “Take Me Out”; Tovah Feldshuh in William Gibson’s “Golda’s Balcony”; John Lithgow, Eileen Atkins and Ben Chaplin in William Nicholson’s portentous “The Retreat From Moscow” or Al Pacino‘s reprise of Herod in Oscar Wilde’s “Salome.”

Then there was Jimmy Smits gallantly holding up Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics,” and Aidan Gillen‘s star-making breakthrough in David Jones’ atmospheric restaging of “The Caretaker,” by Harold Pinter.

Finally, there were the sensitive performances of Clare Higgins and Jochum ten Haaf in Nicholas Wright’s “Vincent in Brixton.”

And while the public didn’t adore them, this critic and others adored Hamish McColl, Sean Foley and Eddie Braben‘s antics in “The Play What I Wrote.”

Now on with the list, the top 10 of the Broadway season, in alphabetical order.

* “AVENUE Q”: Who would have thought puppets could be both lovable and raunchy? With catchily attractive music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, this off-Broadway import is probably the new musical to beat come Tony time.

* “GYPSY”: Yes, “Gypsy” – what more need be said? Except that Bernadette Peters is absolutely smashing – the best Mama Rose since Ethel Merman.

* “HENRY IV”: Kevin Kline is the Falstaff for our time in a fantastic performance – and most of the rest of the cast are pretty damn good in this conflation of two Shakespeare plays, niftily directed by Jack O’Brien and with a brilliant setting by Ralph Funicello.

* “I AM MY OWN WIFE”: Doug Wright’s one-person, multi-charactered play about a real-life German transvestite who survived both Hitler and the Communist regime of East Germany is the big off-Broadway transfer of the year. Adroitly directed by Moises Kaufman, Jefferson Mays’ quietly flamboyant performance covers whatever deficiencies there are in the play.

* “LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS”: Director Jerry Zaks does wonders for this unexpectedly brilliant, expanded and expansive Broadway staging of what began life as an off-Broadway chamber musical by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman.

* “LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT”: Simply classic, simply unforgettable, Robert Falls’ direction of the O’Neill classic was made remarkable by Brian Dennehy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard – and made one for the history books by Vanessa Red- grave’s violent performance as Mary Tyrone.

* “NINE”: David Leveaux’s revival of Maury Yeston/Arthur Kopit’s Felliniesque musical in many ways surpassed the 1982 original. Antonio Banderas made a stunning Broadway debut as the hero, with Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski, Mary Stuart Masterson and Chita Rivera as some of the woman who loved him.

* “THE BOY FROM OZ”: The Peter Allen bio-musical is worth seeing just for Hugh Jackman (the new boy in town from Oz), whose dazzling Broadway debut this is.

* “WONDERFUL TOWN”: Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green in their second at-bat (the first was “On the Town”) scored one of Broadway’s most spectacular home runs. Though Kathleen Marshall’s engaging staging suffers just a smidgen from its concert-version origins, Donna Murphy takes Broadway by storm and gift-packages it as a typhoon.